writerish person and beautiful weirdo

Hottie Scotty (Reply)

(It's a bit late. I had a bunch of stuff going on at once, and I apologize.)

In between Treasure for Treasure getting accepted, and A Dandelion for Tulip coming out, and audiobooks and blog tours (never again with the blog tour. I don't think it's a format suited to someone who takes things too seriously and makes terrible first impressions), and real life, I released a short little story onto Amazon. It's called Hottie Scotty and Mr. Porter.

I'm not going to pretend it's deep, because it isn't. What it is (to me) is a soft tribute to the books of short romantic stories Lucy Maud Montgomery used to write. But, you know, gay. And set now. (I grew up with her books, and some of those shorts in her collections have influenced me so much. Seriously. I always tell people, A Dinner of Herbs explains so much about my writing style. And someday, just imagine a collection of sometimes funny, sometimes sad, gentle, kind queer love stories in that style. SIGH.)

Anyway. Obviously LMM didn't write a slightly kinky relationship between a small town firefighter and a librarian, but she did like to show bullies in all their pettiness, and that is an inspiration here, too.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I should just link to the book and post the blurb, and I will. But I wanted to talk about it a little first, because I ignored it for so long. My quiet story about the scent of jasmine, and two very lonely people who are in fact quite similiar, even though on the surface no one would ever think that. They are so good and brave with each other, but (hopefully) realistically brave. Because everyone has fears and nerves, and some have them for really good reasons, and it's so wonderful to me when people who are struggling try and then find that someone loves them. I just... smiles, you guys. It gives me such smiles. So that's what I wanted, and that's what I wrote. A gentle story about two dorks who might seem to be put together, or unobtainable levels of hot, but who are, in fact, just nervous dorks who really, really like being around each other.

Of course, we don't live in an LMM world, so small town bullies are a little less petty or thoughtless, and a little more outright unfeeling and terrible, but this is R. Cooper's world, so our dorks get a happy ending anyway, and the bullies get to see themselves portrayed in a story, being as horrible as the rest of us know they are.

<3

To help out his sister, Scott moved to the small town of Montgomery, where there isn’t much to do and no one for him to date. Well, there’s one other openly gay man in town—Henry ‘Cole’ Porter, a widower who runs the school library, but after one drunken night together, Cole has kept his distance. Scott is used to that. He spends a lot of time working out to look good, and from the slow way he talks and the frat house atmosphere at the fire station where he works, it’s easy to assume he’s stupid. Most people are happy to admire his body and assume that’s all he wants from them, and deep down, Scott is too afraid to try asking for more.

Which is why sweet, romantic Scott has been secretly pining after Cole for months when some of the town’s nosier residents decide Cole has been single long enough. They have a plan to throw every successful, smart, professional gay man in a thirty-mile radius Cole’s way, whether he likes it or not. Their list of candidates doesn’t include Scott, and Scott’s insecurities prevent him from stepping forward—even when it seems as though Cole is asking him to.

Cole is everything Scott isn’t; highly educated, stylish, with refined tastes. He’s also stubborn and sarcastic, and not nearly as smart about the workings of his own heart as people might think. It might take a lot of the wrong men for him to realize the right one has been in front of him all along.